Keeping Art Alive in the Movies

The future of cinema in the age of 3-D blockbusters and digital downloads.

Transcript

Over a year ago

TRANSCRIPT

Question: How can films stay artistically vital in the coming
decades?

John Cameron Mitchell: We’re in a strange
pocket of time where we don’t know how films, films haven’t yet been,
there’s no comprehensive way of delivering films digitally to
everyone—i.e. all films on demand, quickly, easily, cheaply. Movie
theaters don’t have digital projection yet, which means there’s
financial constraints for certain films that right now are doing well,
but because of the economics, doesn’t make sense to make prints for
other theaters. It’s just better to show them on demand, in the
theater, on DVD, as the day and date situation, which means everything,
you know, you can see it in different forms all on the same day. Which
is what I see in HD Net and other companies are doing more, which may be
the future, looks like the future.

So right now, people aren’t,
can’t quite figure out how to make money on the small films, you know,
there’s the fear that the product’s being devalued and people don’t feel
like they have to pay for films the way they have for music over the
last few years, so that’s going to be very difficult to... you know,
will that change, will people... I think the only way it will change is
if they figure out that technology immediately, and all the companies
agreeing on a single way to deliver the films by broadband to people’s
TV’s.

So, that kind of stuff is making, there’s probably a third
the number of the films being made, small films, all films, than there
were two years ago. And they tend toward the giant, you know, 3D kind
of thing, genre thing, Hollywood thing, or the other side, which is
small films packed with stars, in a low budget, less than 10 million,
and there’s also this opportunity for very cheap films to lead the way,
perhaps in quality, but also in... economically, it’s like how they’re
delivered. So films made for less than half a million, you’ll see a lot
more of. You’ll see them over 100 million and less than a half a
million and not as much in the middle. Stars seem to be less important
for what people want to see now than they used to be. They don’t
guarantee grosses any more, which I think in a way is probably a relief,
but it’s confusing for the studios, people aren’t sure of where to put
their money.

Unfortunately, it takes time for good filmmakers to develop, there’s not
too many whose first films fully develop because you need so many
skills, musical, actor, financial, visual, you know, it’s not just like
writing a song, you can have people who are, you know, prodigies,
musically, but in a way you have to have prodigies, people who can do
all kinds of things in order to be a good director. So, the first film
isn’t always the best. Once in a while you’ll have someone very unusual
will come out, like Jonathan Caouette, who did "Tarnation," or you
know, Tarantino... when he, you know, "Reservoir Dogs," or someone who
seems to have mastered it on their first go, and those are very, those
are rare. But it’s, you know, the David Lynches of the world and
Scorsese and such made a lot of shorts and made some early films that
were finding their way before they made their "Taxi Driver" or their,
you know, "Blue Velvet."

So, it’s easier to make films now,
technologically, financially, you know, the equipment is there for young
people to do it. There is the Internet for distribution, but how do
you make money while you’re doing it, is the piece of the puzzle that’s
still to be figured out.
Recorded on May 3, 2010
Interviewed by Austin Allen

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